things i think about when i’m supposed to be praying

•           squeezing my eyes hard and seeing shapes
•           calling the shapes god
•           saying hello to myself
•           wondering what repentance meant
•           being smart enough to figure out what repentance meant
•           not wanting to apologize
•           being watched
•           squeezing again
•           what was i down there for?
•           dying or being dead?
•           seeing my tears from the inside
•           water
•           water being big
•           water being god, too
•           offerings
•           praying standing up
•           holiday prayers
•           long wind
•           elders
•           calling god father god
•           god having an alias
•           wondering how god is a father and a god
•           Zeus.
•           people holding hands
•           guessing when they’d tighten their grip
•           the grip being the tightest at the end
•           my daddy praying over food
•           the prayer always being the same
•           my daddy stuttering, sometimes
•           getting stuck on “and”
•           asking the food to nourish our bodies
•           the food not being nourishing
•           my mother’s obsession with making salads
•           nobody caring about my mother or her salads
•           me not caring about my mother or her salads
•           my mother claiming to know the same god as everyone else

i lied, i don’t think i like men enough

Shy-Zahir Moses (they/them) is a poet, scholar, and lover working on a way to make it out of Texas. They obtained their MFA from The New Writers Project at The University of Texas at Austin. Their work has received support from Callaloo, A Gathering Together, The Watering Hole, and Rutgers's Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice.